I have tried to figure this out on my own but throughout all the reading I have done, it seems like I keep finding conflicting answers or the instructions they give are unclear… Am I supposed to just wipe out the pan after cooking with a paper towel, am I supposed to use water, or am I supposed to lightly wipe it out with soap & water and rinse? Thank you in advance!
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Cast iron pans can rust really easily. Depending on your local humidity, towel drying might be necessary. It’s also possible to use too rough of a scrubber/brush, but that’s a problem for all cookware.
Otherwise, a proper ‘seasoning’ is oils cooked hot enough and long enough that they are no longer strictly ‘oil’. This means that (most modern) soap will no longer work on it (or at least as well), so you can (and often should) use soapy water to wash food remnants out.
The other side of things: with certain cooking techniques, there won’t be much food stuff left in the pan anyway. If just wiping down with water and a towel clears all the carb based mess, all that’s left would be oil in the pan. And oil by itself isn’t terribly bad for you when left out; the biggest danger is to taste, plus less certain long term issues.
So there’s an effective argument that you don’t *need* to use soap, but you’ll have better food for longer if you do.
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